Let's just say that it's not exactly light reading. But, it is fascinating and it's exercising parts of my brain that have too long lain dormant. My last calculus class was the one that I enrolled in after returning from my mission (10 years ago). My schedule had the wrong classroom on it, so for the first 3 days I showed up to an empty classroom.
Finally someone wrote on the board in that room where the class was actually being held. I walked in late on the 4th day to a full classroom. The professor was mid-lecture talking about "rotating this curve around the axis and determining the volume" and it was at that point that I knew it was a lost cause. (Amazingly, I still remember that moment and what he was talking about.) I asked him after class what he would recommend for a returned missionary who needed to catch-up on Calculus before actually taking his class (which was the second-half of the pair of basic Calc classes).
His recommendation was to basically re-do all the problems from the textbook from the first-half semester of Calculus. As I am now in marketing, you can guess that did not happen.
But that is not to say that I am Math-averse like so many of my colleagues. I simply realized where a wall would be for me and moved in a different direction.
Part of what makes this book a difficult read for someone who doesn't use this kind of math on a daily basis is that he includes lots of equations but jumps past significant chunks of calculations as he progresses through them towards the solution that fits with the point he's making in the text. I'm finding myself struggling through figuring out what happened in-between two steps. Most engineers or mathematicians can probably take those steps for granted, as he does. I'm hopeful that as I continue reading, I'll at least be able to see how the calculations are being done a little more quickly.
As a final note, to anyone else that picks this up, I would encourage you to skip the Prologue. It's entirely technical but without context. So unless you are intimately familiar with complex and imaginary numbers, it's not going to make much sense. (I nearly gave up on the book, then decided to just give up on the Prologue).
An example of this is on the second page, where he asserts that "every good high-school math student knows how to prove (SQRT)2 is irrational, but that doesn't mean it's now just a ho-hum demonstration." Um... I don't know how to prove that's irrational. I didn't even remember what an irrational number was when I read that bit. So, like I said, start with Chapter 1 if you pick this book up.
Oh, also, you'll want to keep a calculator handy. (How often do you hear that? At least for the books I read, not very often at all.)
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